Diksha Dwivedi’s book shares letters from soldiers to their kin during the 1999 Kargil War, sometimes even moments before death.
The 1999 Kargil War was the first in India’s history that was extensively covered in India by newspapers and magazines, as well as 24×7 television news in its infancy.
And while jingoism over the war continues in both India and Pakistan even today, Diksha Dwivedi’s book ‘Letters from Kargil: The War Through Our Soldiers’ Eyes’ (Juggernaut, 2017) offers a new perspective by humanising the faceless soldiers who fought for India.
Dwivedi shares wartime letters from soldiers to their near and dear ones, sometimes even moments before their death. The author says she was spurred to write these stories in the memory of her father Major C.B. Dwivedi, who was killed in action when she was only eight, fighting at Dras. She realised that there were no personal anecdotes of those in the line of fire during the war, and no preservation of it for posterity.
Unlike most accounts of the war, Dwivedi’s narrative juxtaposes tales of fighting in the frontline with the desires, the apprehensions, and the mental tumult that soldiers were going through thousands of feet above sea level in frigid conditions.
The book also gives glimpses of the repercussions of the war on those that lived on.
The reader finds soldiers consoling their parents, lovers, and siblings before going to battle. Some write about how proud they are to be fighting, some ponder about their pets back at home, and some do not write about the war at all, instead asking their children how school was.
The book does sometimes border on a jingoistic description of the military, but it is understandable, considering the circumstances of the author. But Dwivedi does an admirable job of researching and adding subjectivity to a cruel war.